Forum:Story specific categories
We have a few categories that are specific to a given story, which in some instances creates a level of redundancy. We've done away with some of this in the past, eg. countries that are Race Colonies are not listed in both the Worldwar and Race Colonies categories, but simply in the latter. We also did this with Atlantean cities and NAU provinces. We could also do with this with certain nationalites. People from Atlantis are presently listed in both "Atlanteans" and "Atlantis Characters". This also applies to the various nations found in Videssos, the Race, Minervans, Detinans, etc. We do also like our parallelism in our categories, though. Obviously, not all Atlantis Characters are Atlanteans, but all Atlanteans are Atlantis characters. Should we remove Atlanteans from the Atlantis Characters category? Should we then do this with other character categories? Or should we just leave the characters aside, and apply this rule only to geography as we have now? TR 22:19, December 3, 2009 (UTC) :I'm tempted to say we should do as you suggest, but the counterargument is also strong. Nationality and ethnicity are not the same as story-characterness. Also, all Atlanteans are not necessarily Atlantis characters. I'm thinking of Victor Radcliff's sons--the one whose name escapes me, who gets just a posthumous mention; and Nick, whom Victor frets about before he's born and whom Frederick shrugs off after he's dead. Now that the idea's in my head, I kind of want to reexamine what being a "character" in the story means. Does the fact that Morrell said "Ooh, look, a book by Vegetius" really qualify Vegetius as a SV character? And take someone like Sherran, or the various long-dead emperors who got ships named after them, and you couldn't really say that all Lizards are Worldwar characters. :Not saying we adopt this new standard right away, or even that it's not arguable; but if we're going to say that being an Atlantean is as good as being an Atlantis character, we're going to need to say definitively that everyone who gets a half-assed offstage mention is a character. And even if we don't, I'm still not ready to say that nationality or species equals being a character just because that made-up society only occurs in such-and-such story. Turtle Fan 00:03, December 4, 2009 (UTC) ::I think we've discussed the appearing character vs. passing reference in the past but came to no resolution. I was hoping that the character templates would help resolve the issue to some extent. ::We could very easily create a series of categories of "people referenced in_______". :::That'd be good. Turtle Fan 19:55, December 4, 2009 (UTC) ::::I've always been somewhat troubled calling an individual mentioned in a story but who does not put in an appearance a character. This seems to be a good way to go. ML4E 03:31, December 7, 2009 (UTC) :::::Hear hear! Turtle Fan 03:58, December 7, 2009 (UTC) ::That having been said, I suggest that even if we somehow split appearing vs. referenced characters, you've unintentionally suggested that there might be distinctions to be made within referenced. While Nicholas doesn't ever appear in any Atlantis book, I think his importance (son of one hero, father of another) is easy to measure, and so would probably worth noting somehow. Aside from having ships named after them, the emperors respective lives don't demonstrably move the plot/history of Worldwar forward. TR 16:00, December 4, 2009 (UTC) :::So "significant references" and "insignificant references"? Turtle Fan 19:55, December 4, 2009 (UTC) ::::And then we'd have to define those terms. Maybe just leaving it as "Referenced In" for now. We should probably decide what constitutes a reference--FDR only actually interacts with characters in UtB, but there is a radio speech in ItB. Does the radio speech count as an appearance or merely a reference? And should special consideration be given for historicals? TR 20:36, December 4, 2009 (UTC) :::::It sounds like the historicals should be treated the way the "soldiers" category was sub-divided into "soldiers who fought in war X". It could be called "historicals in story Y" and be a sub-cat of both the story and historicals. ML4E 03:31, December 7, 2009 (UTC) ::::::Kind of like the old "Historical Figures in Such-and-Such" lists that Silver had up when we first got here? Except rather more useful and dynamic, though in those days this place was so undeveloped that level of classification would have been superfluous. I can get on board with that, though I'd like to leave them in Historical Figures. It was smart not making that Historical Characters when we moved everyone over from Historical figure. Now it can equally accomodate both those who put in appearances and those whose books some character mentions reading on one occasion. Turtle Fan 03:58, December 7, 2009 (UTC) :::::::I find having a person in Historical Figures and then Historical Figure Referenced in Story Y a mite redundant. TR 19:00, December 7, 2009 (UTC) ::::::::We could rename the subcat. ::::::::I'm glad we've winnowed so many articles into more precise, but we have so few truly large categories left. I would miss them when they're gone. Turtle Fan 19:30, December 7, 2009 (UTC) :::::::My point is that I don't think we even need to be specific in the People referenced catetories. I think its enough to have Person X in the HIstorical Figures category, and then have them in People Referenced in Story Y category. TR 19:57, December 7, 2009 (UTC) ::::::Oh! Yes, that sounds good to me. Most references will be historical, though even now I'm thinking of more and more fictionals. Turtle Fan 20:46, December 7, 2009 (UTC)